This year at Rainbow one of our high school students is accompanying the opening Easter hymn, Christ the Lord is Risn’ today. I hope she isn’t late, which I say only from personal experience. (My one and only debut as the high school Easter trumpeter wasn’t meant to be. Likely after rehearsal I fell asleep upstairs in a Sunday School room and no one could find me in time for the opening hymn.)  

With time, I’ve become a punctual person, which is a good trait for a pastor, especially on Sundays. And yet, I’ve learned that you can be or feel late for Easter in other ways. One can be on time and even the one with the microphone or solo, and still feel out of key/step, not altogether “there.” In other words, just because you are on time for Easter, doesn’t mean it feels like Easter.  You can know the Easter “notes” and still feel a few beats behind from where you’d like to be or where you think you should be in terms of Easter joy and hope. Again, I say this from personal experience. Pastors, too, can feel late to the Easter party and promise—some years we, too, go through the motions, hoping that the motions themselves will keep us going or just be enough.

This year I don’t want just to show up on time for Easter in a going-through-the-motions-way. I want (us) to be fully awake for what it might be like to live Easter in real time. I even wiped dust off the old trumpet case. I couldn’t squeak out a single note, but that’s ok. Fortunately Abigail has the trumpet covered this year. 

And to those who show up late or not at all, or who choose, instead, to find a comfy couch (or pew) to nap on, that’s ok too. Same for those who will undoubtedly feel as if they are half there, just going through the motions this year. 

Maybe just maybe, you will find yourself hoping, with me, for something different this year. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll find ourselves living the Easter promise, in real time.